Blog: Tesco stung again in horse meat scandal

Tesco executives will no doubt be cursing this afternoon after it emerged that one of the firm's stores allowed beef burgers withdrawn in the horse meat scandal to be sold...to a BBC journalist.

Last week, many analysts described Tesco's response to the horse meat problem as text-book crisis management. It quickly issued a full apology for a test showing 29% horse meat in one of its frozen economy burgers, and swiftly removed potentially affected products from sale.

However, Tesco's halo had a wobble today when the BBC revealed that checkout staff at one its stores in Oxfordshire had overridden the retailer's electronic system to allow withdrawn burgers to be sold.

In the grand scheme of things, there's little harm done, with all tests on affected burgers showing no risk to public health.

This is, though, one more example of something slipping through the net in the food supply chain.

You can trot out all the, ahem, horse jokes you like, but there is much more serious side to all of this. Those all at levels of the food supply chain cannot keep shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted.

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